Larger Role Is Worth the Longer Hours, Teachers Say

Teachers at Hillside Junior High School in Simi Valley aren’t likely to complain about the hiring of Kathy Scroggin, the woman selected this summer to be their new principal. That’s because they chose her. They also picked their new assistant principal, Steve Kalan.

At Conejo Elementary School in nearby Thousand Oaks, the faculty had a say in hiring two new teachers, a custodian and the office secretary. Teachers there also want to replace state-mandated special education classes with their own method of teaching the school’s educationally and emotionally handicapped students.

As Los Angeles school administrators begin this fall to share for the first time some of their power with faculty and community members, staff members at Hillside and Conejo say the transition is unlikely to be easy. But they say the results are worth the effort.

Pilot Project

Now in the fifth year of a five-year pilot project that allows teachers a much larger voice in running their schools, teachers at those schools say they have paid for their increased power with more work and longer hours.

They said extensive training and seasoning are required to make the power-sharing work. Their ideas have been turned down by district authorities at least twice. And a handful of colleagues have decided not to participate, saying that they would rather not be bothered with more duties than they already have.

But for most of the teachers, who formerly had near total control in their classrooms but next to none outside of it, the experiment has provided a new appreciation for what they can accomplish.

“I wouldn’t give up the power and neither would others who are seriously involved in the project,” said Denise Byrnes, a Hillside teacher.

The two eastern Ventura County schools are among 26 in the nation--and the only two in California--taking part in the National Education Assn.’s Mastery in Learning project. Officials from the NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, as well as administrators in the Simi Valley and Conejo Valley unified school districts, will evaluate the project’s results next spring.

Helped Schools

The NEA helped the participating schools raise money from private foundations to help support the training of teachers, as well as the educational research needed to implement changes sought by the faculty.

Project consultant Bob McClure said the NEA’s goal was to allow teachers at each of the schools to decide for themselves what changes to make in instruction. But the union offered virtually no guidelines about what issues teachers should take up.

“The idea was to extend the leash and see what the faculty could do with their school,” McClure said.

At least one measure, test scores of the California Assessment Program, shows that significant academic improvement occurred at both schools during the past three years. Hillside, for example, moved from last to first among Simi Valley’s four junior high schools in the reading and writing portions of the test.

“It would be difficult to really explain the increases but we have to assume that something was happening at the school to make a difference,” said Robert Isenberg, the Simi Valley district’s director of testing.

Whether the districts allow the teachers to retain expanded decision-making powers or broaden the program to other schools will depend largely on what happens this year, district officials and teachers said. At both schools, teachers hope that parents and students will give good reviews to the teachers’ experimental classroom programs.

Matter of Time

But regardless of the outcome of those evaluations, local teachers union representatives say it is only a matter of time before greater management powers become a common element in teachers’ contracts.

“This is the wave of the future,” said Hal Vick, executive director of the Simi Educators Assn. and the United Assn. of Conejo Teachers.

In addition to seeking raises, teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District went on strike for nine days last spring to win the power to overrule school principals in some cases.

But even though he supports the Mastery in Learning project, William Seaver, Conejo Valley district superintendent, is skeptical about granting teachers similar powers in his district.

“I think it’s good management for the principal to work with teachers but the principal has to have the ultimate authority,” Seaver said. “There are areas of responsibility that the administration has and I don’t see any strong need to change those.”

Seaver said teachers in his district have for many years had a say in school management through their membership with parents and administrators on school councils. Traditionally, however, those councils have lacked power over the most important of school decisions--those involving budgets, curricula and hiring.

Now that the district has relinquished power to teachers in even those areas, teachers are using it to address what they see as key issues at their schools. NEA officials said most of the 26 schools in the program chose to address curricular issues, but some, as at Hillside, have made key personnel changes and even adopted changes in school budgeting.

Veto Power

Nevertheless, principals at both California schools in the NEA project, as well as school board members, retain the power to veto any faculty idea. But teachers say they also have real power because they behave as if they do.

“The principal has the final say and I’m not reluctant to use it,” said Neil Snyder, Conejo Elementary School principal. But he said he uses his veto power only after discussing the issue with teachers. “The era of one guy leading the posse is over.”

Snyder has, for example, worked with teachers to raise money for major school repairs and renovations, one of the top priorities adopted by the faculty after joining the NEA program. They worked together and were successful on that issue.

But even the principal’s endorsement doesn’t always guarantee success. The teachers at Conejo, for example, have learned some hard lessons over their plan to allow the school’s 20 or so educationally and emotionally handicapped students to spend most of their classroom hours with regular students.

Mixing special education students with regular students is not completely new. Special education students already mix with regular students in single subjects such as reading and physical education. But teachers at Conejo proposed restructuring the entire fifth and sixth grades so that special education students and their teachers would join regular classes for all the basic subjects, such as math and English.

Reduce Class Size

The idea, according to the teachers who proposed it, would allow special education students a chance to mingle with regular students and would reduce class size for all students. Teachers would share teaching duties, each giving lessons in the subjects they know most about.

“Some of the students have expressed some concerns,” said special education teacher Marsha Siever. “But most said they wanted to be with the regular kids.”

A majority of the parents in the grades affected by the proposal were in favor of it. And teachers said they believed that they had the go-ahead for beginning the restructuring this fall. But district officials told the teachers in August that state law requires the plan to be approved by the local and state boards of education.

“It’s good to mainstream children with special needs into other classes, but the concern is that in special education classes you have teachers with very specific skills,” Supt. Seaver said. “You don’t want the children to lose anything.”

Teachers at Conejo Elementary say they are preparing a formal proposal on the idea to present to the school board. They said they are optimistic that the board will approve it in time for the restructuring to occur this year.

At Hillside, teachers last year also met obstacles when they proposed opening school a week early and adding additional vacation days during the year. A majority of the school’s parents opposed the idea.

But the faculty got no opposition to a new program that this year will change the way 120 seventh-graders are taught at the school. Those students, instead of going to separate English, science, history and math classes, will stay in the same classroom and their teachers will come to them. The change allows teachers to combine lessons in different subjects and to schedule two- and three-hour blocks of time for instruction instead of the traditional one-hour period.

“The history teacher starts the year teaching the fall of the Roman Empire, and I can be teaching Greek and Roman mythology,” said Hillside English teacher Kimberly Lee. “The difference here is that teachers don’t have to be in complete isolation from each other.”

Teachers put in extra time, routinely meeting two and three times a week to discuss such projects. Grants from the nonprofit Stuart Foundation of San Francisco have paid for substitutes to take over classes when teachers attend meetings and training sessions, and for some overtime pay.

But many of the teachers interviewed at both schools say that since the program began they have routinely put in extra hours without pay. They are motivated to work harder, they said, because their ideas are taken seriously by school administrators.

The extra work put in by teachers, as well as the improved test scores, persuaded Simi Valley Supt. John Duncan to approve a request last year by Hillside teachers to hire their new principal and vice principal. Duncan also approved a request by teachers to draw up a plan to further expand their power at the school.

“There was some suspicion, some fear of the unknown when this started,” Duncan said. “It was the NEA and no one was sure what the desired outcome was.” But apparently, he said, the goal was “more enthusiastic and effective teachers.”

Former NEA project consultant Joyce Tambor, now a professor of education at Cal State Northridge, said the experiment’s purpose has been to show that school staff members know best which programs will work for their students.

The problem with much school reform, Tambor said, is that it originates far from the classroom.

“The programs that the two schools are trying are not all new, but what is different is that the teachers have decided on them, not the state or the federal government,” Tambor said. “Attitudes are changing and teachers are no longer content with received wisdom.”

Union executive Vick said teachers unions, like some district administrators, are nervous about changes in the system and are uncertain of their roles as teachers assume more managerial power.

“If teachers are fully empowered at the local level, do they really need an association or even a contract?” Vick asked. “Obviously we think they do.”

The eventual expansion of shared decision-making to teachers at other schools in the two districts is very much on the minds of local unions, Vick said.

Teachers in the Conejo district are in the third year of a three-year contract. When negotiations begin next spring, it is likely that increased power for teachers will be on the bargaining table, Vick said. In Simi Valley, that scenario will probably be replayed a year later when teachers reach the end of the current three-year contract.

“It’s going to be part of contracts in many, many districts,” said Emily Avey, a kindergarten teacher at Conejo Elementary and a board member of the California Teachers Assn. “I believe there are many teachers in this district who would want it.”